We concluded our first fundraising event in grand fashion sitting on top of the leaderboard at the Blue Grass Community Foundation’s GoodGiving Challenge! What a week we had and our friends came through in a big way.

“We are very excited about the great response we had from friends of the foundation,” states Managing Director Larry Pemble. “We’ve worked hard to spread awareness about our work and we couldn’t be happier about the support we received.”

For the past year, the James Baker Hall Foundation has been supporting the Write to Recover program at the Bullitt County Detention Center. Director Bobbi Buchanan works with the Kentucky Department of Corrections Substance Abuse Program to teach female inmates expressive writing as a way to deal with emotions.

You probably would know his voice from KET, but these days Bill Goodman is far from a TV studio. For the past eight years, Bill has led Kentucky Humanities, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. And it all came about over his love of books.

We are ready to roll up our sleeves and get after this! When you’re new and finding your footing in the world as the James Baker Hall Foundation is, it’s important to create opportunities. The Foundation has done a lot in one year with a successful kick-off event in May, a well-received book award that saw 70 entries and the selection of our first winner (Congratulations, Wes!) plus working with two incredible grantees, Write to Recover and The Hindman Settlement School.
Whew . . . talk about a full year! But now, we have an opportunity and you can be a part of it.

On October 1st, the foundation announced our first book award winner at Spalding University

When you do something for the first time, you never know how it will turn out. The foundation announced the book award at our event on May 1 and by the deadline of June 30, we had over 70 manuscripts submitted! We were stunned with the response and very pleased. Many thanks to acclaimed poet, Greg Pape, for serving as the judge. We are proud to announce George Wesley Houp as the 2024 James Baker Hall Foundation Book Award winner for his submission Strung Out Along the Endless Branch.